Sierra Leone Brewery Limited (SLBL) has embarked upon the 2024 Sorghum Cultivation and Awareness Campaign, a strategic initiative designed to bolster the local content policy and stimulate domestic sorghum production. The primary goal of this campaign is to provide farmers with superior sorghum varieties characterized by increased yields and abbreviated cultivation cycles, thereby augmenting their economic prosperity.
The campaign's rollout is presently underway in Freetown and several districts, including Bo, Kenema, Mile 91, and Moyamba. SLBL aims to actively engage and attract more youths and women to participate in sorghum cultivation initiatives. Currently, over 25,000 sorghum farmers and their families depend on sorghum cultivation for sustenance.
By expanding the farmer base, SLBL intends to secure a consistent supply of local sorghum to satisfy its daily production demands. To incentivize farmer participation in sorghum cultivation, SLBL offers complimentary seeds, educational opportunities, and financial assistance through loans.
Moreover, the brewery has implemented a pre-payment system to facilitate plantation and supply chain management. Despite these measures, SLBL has encountered challenges in procuring the requisite volume of local sorghum from farmers, necessitating the launch of this campaign.
Foday Daboh, the Corporate Affairs Manager, elucidated that the Pre-Harvest Sorghum Cultivation Campaign aims to assist farmers nationwide in cultivating sorghum variants aligned with SLBL's specifications. The campaign endeavors to enhance farmers' income generation and maximize high-yield harvests for sale to SLBL.
Farmers receive specialized training on utilizing preferred sorghum strains, complemented by demonstration plots to exhibit optimal agronomic practices for elevating produce quality and quantity at the farm level.
SLBL's parent conglomerate, Heineken International, remains committed to advancing its local sourcing enhancement agenda as part of the 2025 BABW strategy. The Sorghum Cultivation and Awareness Campaign synergizes with this agenda and strives to fortify the brewery's local sourcing endeavors.
The introduction of this campaign underscores SLBL's aspiration to enlist more farmers and augment the volume of locally sourced sorghum available for its production operations. Through the promotion of sorghum cultivation and sustained farmer support, SLBL aspires not only to meet its internal requirements but also to uplift the livelihoods of farmers across Sierra Leone.
